


Lipstick

by MisabeltheMiserable



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence - Lucifer (TV) Season 03, Chloe Decker Finds Out, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Sex, Emotionally Intelligent Chloe, Episode: s03e17 Let Pinhead Sing!, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, I mean it really heart-wrenchingly cute shit guys, Kissing, Lucifer is helpless and In Love, Marcus Pierce can rot in a hole, Pining, Plot, Protective Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), Romance, Season/Series 03, Smut, Suggestive Themes, Sweet, Violence, Yearning, devil reveal, oh lord there's pining, this is some high fucking romance lads, this was supposed to be a oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:00:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23812696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MisabeltheMiserable/pseuds/MisabeltheMiserable
Summary: When the dust settles at the end of Season 3 Episode 17, 'Let Pinhead Sing!', Chloe leaves on her date with Pierce. Lucifer is left alone with the dawning realization that he's ruined everything, pushed her away and into the arms of humanity's first murderer. Then Chloe comes back. And she sees something that makes no sense at all.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 271
Kudos: 817





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There's a truly indecent amount of italics and ellipses in this. I'm aware it's terrible writing etiquette, but I can't bring myself to care.  
> A note on how I write Lucifer’s perspective: he’s a dumb bitch. I love him to bits, he’s a lovely soft boy who deserves nice things, but he’s a dumb bitch who wouldn’t know a Brain Cell™ if he met it in his mashed potatoes. As well as being the Original Sinner, I think he might also be the Original Himbo.
> 
> Set at the end of Season 3 Ep 17 ‘Let Pinhead Sing’

**Chapter 1**

It  _ wasn’t  _ a fixation. Lucifer was quite certain about that. He’d only been thinking about it for a few months. Not  _ all  _ the time. Off and on. Mostly on. Maybe once a week. Maybe a few times a week. Every day. If he was honest, it was every day. In his defense, it was so uncommon for the detective to wear lipstick that the few occasions upon which she did stuck out vividly in his memory. Mostly it was for the odd black-tie event at which they’d be conducting some (inevitably doomed) undercover operation, but once,  _ once,  _ she’d worn it at the precinct. He didn’t remember much else from that day. Paperwork? The detective being annoyed at him? That didn’t narrow it down. The majority of what he could recall was just, her mouth.

All this would be less of a problem, Lucifer decided, if his response had been typically lecherous. He’d just conclude that Chloe wearing lipstick was a turn-on for him, tell her so, receive her eye-roll in response, and move on with his life. But since admitting to himself that what he felt for her were, in fact,  _ feelings _ , it was getting more and more difficult to ignore how disgustingly  _ tame  _ his fantasies were becoming. Nearly, dare he say it,  _ domestic. _ Pathetic.

It was embarrassing to admit how not-racy his daydreams were. He was the devil, Lucifer told himself sternly; he had thrown himself headlong into lust and fornication ever since they had been invented. He had quite literally seen it all, and done most of it. So it was the cause of no little alarm to realize that the detective’s beguilingly painted mouth was inspiring  _ domesticity _ in him. He fantasized about her leaving little lipstick marks on his cheek that he could wear proudly around town, and then pretend to be embarrassed when someone pointed it out. He wanted to kiss the sense out of her before she left for work, make her throw up her hands in exasperation because he’d made a mess of the colour she was wearing that day. He wanted to grin at her and taste the lipstick she’d smeared all over his mouth.

But in this moment, all of that had never seemed further away. More out of reach. He’d bolloxed it up along the way, he knew that all too well. For nearly a year after their near-miss and the subsequent Candy-shaped nail in the coffin, Lucifer had been steadfastly convinced that any remnant of a  _ feeling  _ on her part was a vile manipulation on his Father’s part. And a choice made without free will was no choice at all, something he abhorred in principle and practice. But lately, he’d had a sinking feeling that he’d gone wrong somewhere. Dr. Linda remained adamant that Chloe’s feelings and choices were her own, and perhaps there was something in that. As of tonight, she’d chosen Pierce, Cain, the world’s first murderer, over him. They were going on a  _ date _ ¸ and he’d never tasted anything more bitter.

Tucking himself morosely into a corner, Lucifer observed. Around him, the precinct’s ground floor office was gradually settling into night mode. The day-shift staff were trickling out bit by bit, exchanging goodbyes, texting their loved ones as they filed away stray papers and gathered their belongings. Cain was saying something to the detective, holding his ridiculous bike helmet and checking his watch. She smiled and nodded, looking a little giddy. Lucifer’s insides panged uncomfortably. He didn’t think he’d ever made her look that happy.

Cain left with an infuriatingly buoyant air of confidence, and Chloe returned to her desk. As the natural light dimmed, the lamp on each desk became muted spotlights dotted around the office floor. The detective tidied some files into a pile, drumming her fingers nervously when she was finished. She seemed to be deciding something, because after a moment she reached into her bag, prodding around before pulling out a tube of lipstick and a compact. Lucifer watched Chloe carefully smooth on her lipstick, with a precise but unpractised hand. Usually, he’d enjoy witnessing this quiet moment of her life, but instead he felt too hot, too cold, as though his organs were trying to crawl out through his mouth. Too frantic to keep still, too heavy to do anything but sit like the lead in his stomach and watch the nascence of a future he dreaded.

Rising to her feet, Chloe gave herself a nervous once-over, and paused to pull a tissue out of the box on her desk. Folding it in half once, she pressed a quick kiss to the centre. It was a trick he’d seen her do before, claiming that it settled the lipstick. She checked her watch. Whatever the time was, it made her grimace. She picked up her bag, dropping the marked tissue onto the desk in her haste, and hurried towards the exit.

Like a satellite towards a sun, Lucifer found himself carried over to her desk. His hands were clenching and releasing compulsively. He hovered. Wavered. It was creepy, he knew that, to be so fixated on a square of tissue paper, just because it happened to have an imprint of lipstick on it. Her lipstick. Her lips. It wasn’t just creepy, it was  _ absurd _ . But he couldn’t stop that nasty little mutter in the back of his head that said this was as close to her kiss as he could ever hope to be. He was already holding it in his palm, with as much as care and reverence as he’d preserved the precious memory of their kiss on the beach. Perhaps if he hadn’t ruined everything, hurt her and pushed her away, it would have been him on a date with her tonight. But he had. And suddenly that inescapable knowledge was the coldest cage he’d ever known.

* * *

Digging around in her bag, Chloe cursed quietly. Her good phone charger was still plugged into the outlet by her desk, and her phone was down to twenty-one percent battery. She was already late, and it would  _ probably _ survive the evening… she vacillated. Nope, no, she couldn’t condone the rashness of leaving for the evening without reliable means of communication, just couldn’t do it. Slamming her car door shut again, Chloe hurried back through the garage to the elevators.

Re-entering the office space, she drew to a halt at the apprehension that someone was standing at her desk. Recognising Lucifer in profile, she relaxed and moved closer by a few steps, frowning a little. He’d disappeared after she rebuffed his self-invitation to the concert, but here he was, being weird once again. What the hell was he holding?

At the glimpse of white tissue paper and a dark pink imprint, realization struck. Chloe was brought up short, automatically drawing a little out of sight. What in the  _ hell? _

She watched him, thinking that at any moment he would look around and see her, grin his feline grin, and give her some evasive and no doubt lecherous explanation for why he was looking down at the print of her lipstick as though it was something holy and tragic. He didn’t. He didn’t stir, and his gaze never wavered from the square of delicate paper resting in his palm. Chloe couldn’t decipher his expression, but she thought it was – sad? It was akin to the expression he sometimes wore when he thought he was alone, and she felt guilty – almost voyeuristic – at witnessing this rare moment of unedited fragility.

Lucifer paused for a moment more, then slowly, hesitatingly, brought the paper to his lips and brushed the barest of kisses over the place her mouth had touched. Chloe's breath stuttered in her lungs and she could feel her heartbeat thumping, singing, swooping. Biting down hard on her lip, she watched as Lucifer’s eyes closed for just a moment, and a look of raw, unmistakable  _ longing _ swept over his whole body, shoulders bowing with the weight of it, Atlas made to tremble by the imprint of a kiss. It passed, and he held the paper napkin loosely in his hands again, smoothing his thumbs so very delicately over its edges. He folded it so that the lipstick print was preserved carefully inside, then tucked it with utmost gentleness into the inner pocket of his jacket.

Clearing his throat, Lucifer stood up straight again, adjusting his lapels with the air of a cat shaking water from its paws. Chloe blinked, and it was though a spell had broken. The noises of the precinct, the bustle of everybody preparing for the night shift, the muted hum of voices all faded back in. She couldn’t have been watching Lucifer for more than a few seconds, but it seemed quite a different world than the one she had known before she had walked back into the precinct. She couldn’t even remember what she came back for. Thinking quickly, she ducked into an alcove before Lucifer could turn around and spot her, and he strode right past her with his usual, loping aplomb. At a distance, she trailed after him into the parking lot, feeling lost and dazed. She watched him roar from the exit in his beloved Corvette and fit her keys numbly into the ignition of her own car. Her brain finally kicked into gear about fifteen minutes later, halfway to Axara’s concert venue.

_ Does Lucifer have feelings for me? _ _  
_ _ I have a date with Pierce. _ _  
_ _ How long has he had feelings for me? _ _  
_ _ Pierce is a good, steady man, and I have a date with him. _ _  
_ _ Lucifer made it clear we’re just friends. _ _  
_ _ Pierce asked me out. He’s calm and attentive and has  _ really _ nice arms. _ _  
_ _ Lucifer has nice  _ everything _. And has feelings for me. _ _  
_ _ It won’t end well. He’s rejected me before. _ _  
_ _ He has feelings for me. _ _  
_ _ Pierce probably has feelings for me. _ _  
_ _ Am I supposed to choose between them? _ _  
_ _ There’s no choice to make. Lucifer hasn’t offered anything. Pierce has. _

The idiotic, internal dialogue went round and round, all the way to the concert. Where Pierce was, probably, waiting.

_ Lucifer has feelings for me. _ _  
_ _ He hasn’t said anything. _ _  
_ _ Maybe he doesn’t know what I would say if he did. _ _  
_ _ What  _ would _ I say? _ __  
_ I don’t know. _ _  
_ __ Don’t you?

“Decker. Thought you were gonna be late.” Pierce met her with an easy smile and put his hand on the small of her back.

_ I was busy watching Lucifer Morningstar kiss my lipstick print like it was the hem of Christ’s robe.  _ “Sorry, got caught up at the precinct.”

“Don’t worry about it. You ready to go in?”

_ No.  _ “Yeah. Yeah, I’m ready.”

“You look really nice tonight. I’ve never seen you wear lipstick before.”

Chloe felt as though each step was jarring her whole body. “I don’t often wear it. It’s not very practical for chasing down perps every day. Don’t want to run the risk of it ending up smeared everywhere.” She had a sudden and vivid mental image of leaving lipstick smears on Lucifer’s face. His mouth. Throat. Neck. Would he mind if she left lipstick stains on his pristine white collar? She thought of his happy, dazed look when she had kissed him on the beach. No, he probably wouldn’t mind.

Pierce’s hand on the small of her back shifted, manoeuvring her closer to him in the crowd as they reached the crush at the main entrance. Chloe felt suddenly and acutely uncomfortable. Was this right? Going on a date with someone – her  _ boss, _ and that was its own problem – while she daydreamed about somebody else?

_ It doesn’t matter,  _ she told herself firmly.  _ Whatever my feelings are, Lucifer doesn’t feel the same way.  _ She looked up at Pierce _. _ His jaw was clenching and relaxing as he concentrated on guiding them through the crowd. He was handsome and dependable, and prime boyfriend material. All that she could ask for.

_ And that’s still a terrible reason to go on a date with him.  _ She bit her lip.  _ Shit. _ Pierce didn’t deserve to be her consolation prize.

She didn’t realize she’d stopped dead until Pierce looked down at her with a frown. “Chloe? Everything okay?” His hand was edging around her waist now, urging her forward.

“I…” she stared up at him, trying to work out what conclusion she’d just come to. “I need to go,” she blurted.

“What?”

“I mean, I… I shouldn’t be here.”

“Oh,” Pierce’s expression was dumbfounded, “do you have something at home you need to do?”

“No, I just… this was a mistake. I’m really sorry.”

“What? Chloe, I don’t understand,” he was still holding onto her, his hand tightening. She was vividly aware of the moving, seething crowd all around them, buffeting them towards the entrance, but stood fast.

“I can’t explain, I’m sorry. I have to go.” His hand didn’t budge. “Pierce. I’m leaving. Let me go.”

“No.” His jaw was clenched, and abruptly she was all too aware of the solid wall of his body that stood between her and her exit. “Not until you tell me why you want to leave.”

Chloe’s eyes darted left and right, assessing. She didn’t want to have to knee her boss in the balls in the middle of a crowd, but she could and she would, if he didn’t get his hands off her. Widening her eyes, she looked off into the melee and gasped, “Shit! Pierce, that guy’s got a gun!”

Pierce whipped around reflexively, and she took advantage of his lessened attention and shifted stance, ducking out from his grip and slipping into the crowd. Keeping her head down and moving as quickly and nimbly as she could between the shifting bodies, Chloe thanked her lucky stars that he had fallen for that, and that he was too stocky to follow easily.

Safely out of the crowd, she checked over her shoulder to make sure she had lost him, and hurried back to her car. Back on the highway, Chloe breathed a shaky sigh of relief. That could have turned ugly, and  _ fast _ . Lucky, in a way, that Pierce had let that slip before she had gotten too involved.

The adrenaline was just beginning to fade from her veins as she arrived back to the precinct. She wasn’t even sure why she had come here. Idly, she sat at her desk and thought of Lucifer leaning his slim hip against the edge and holding the imprint of her kiss in his palm. What the hell was she supposed to do with that? Leaning forwards, she rested her face in her hands. Did she  _ want _ to do anything about it? She could pretend it never happened. A part of her wanted to pretend this whole evening had never happened – not Lucifer’s baffling actions, not Pierce’s alarming behaviour, none of it. Wanted to go back to the relative simplicity of just a few hours ago. She snorted, incredulous that her life before tonight now seemed  _ simple  _ to her.

“Chloe?”

Her head jerked up at the gentle touch on her shoulder, still jumpy.

“Ella,” she sighed, relaxing, “it’s just you.” Ella nodded, her sweet face creased in concern. Chloe looked around at the sparsely populated office floor. “What are you doing here? It’s way past time you went home.”

Ella shrugged. “Just finishing up some stuff. Sometimes it’s easier to concentrate when it’s quiet like this. But what about you? Aren’t you supposed to be on your date with Lieutenant Pierce? What happened?”

Chloe hedged a little. “Nothing, I’m fine. What makes you think something happened?”

Ella lifted her eyebrows, unimpressed. “The fact that you’re  _ here _ instead of getting your groove on at Axara’s show with six-plus-feet of our hot lieutenant. C’mon, it’s me.” She poked Chloe’s shoulder, “What gives?”

Hesitating, Chloe flicked her eyes around the office floor. Sparse as it was, she’d been the butt of enough precinct gossip not to want to incite more still. Catching on, Ella gave a little, silent ‘oh’ and nodded. “You wanna come keep me company while I pack up for the night?” She jerked her head towards the lab.

Chloe followed, and Ella closed the door behind them, then pulled down the blinds for extra secrecy. Shielded from both ears and any stray lip-readers who might be about, Ella put her elbows on a spread of crime scene photographs and leaned forward conspiratorially. “So, what’s up?”

Biting her lip, Chloe hesitated. “If I tell you, it absolutely cannot leave this room.”

Nodding vigorously, Ella crossed her heart. “Tribal vow of silence, I promise.”

Taking a deep breath, Chloe began. “Pierce asked me out.”

“Yeah…?” Ella prompted.

“And he… I mean, I…” Chloe tried helplessly. At Ella’s encouraging gesture, she threw up her hands, giving over to the mania bubbling in her chest. “He didn’t even really ask me out, he just  _ told _ me we were going to the concert together! Which I didn’t really mind, okay, because he is  _ really _ good looking, but then Lucifer thought I would go with  _ him _ , and he was, I don’t know, upset, when I said I was going with Pierce, but didn’t say anything else, which is weird all by itself, because he’s really not one to hide it when he’s upset, right?” Ella’s nod spurred her on. “And then everything got weirder and  _ weirder _ , because I did my makeup for the concert at my desk, and I did that trick, to make my lipstick settle, of kissing a tissue, and I left it on my desk.”

“The lipstick?” Ella questioned, looking confused at this apparent tangent.

“No, the tissue with my lipstick print on it.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah. And then I left, but when I got to the parking lot I remembered I’d forgotten… something, God knows what, so I came back in, and _Lucifer_ was there at my desk, and he couldn’t see me but I watched him hold that tissue with my lipstick on it, and he _kissed_ it, Ella! _Kissed_ _it!”_

“Oh…  _ wow _ ,” Ella’s hand crept up to cover her mouth.

“Yes! Exactly! He kissed it! Then he put the tissue in his jacket pocket and left, and it only gets weirder from here.”

“It gets  _ weirder?” _

“I spent the whole trip to the concert thinking about it, and then when I got there Pierce was touching my back and I didn’t  _ want  _ him to, I kept thinking about how I was only there with him because he asked me – kind of – and not because I really wanted to be.”

“Okay,” Ella’s eyes were round as saucers, her hands clasping her cheeks as she watched Chloe’s train-wreck.

“And I kept – thinking, about Lucifer, about how he feels about me, and thinking – would I be there with Pierce if I thought I had a chance with Lucifer? And I shouldn’t treat Pierce as a consolation prize, however nice his arms are, right?”

“Right,” Ella agreed solemnly.

“I got freaked out, I got  _ really  _ freaked out and wanted to leave, but then when I tried to, Pierce wouldn’t let go of me, kept holding onto me and pulling me towards the entrance, even when I told him to get off.”

“Oh,  _ shit _ .”

“I managed to distract him and got away through the crowd, but I don’t think he would have let me go if I hadn’t, you know, escaped, I guess.”

“Oh, my God, Chloe!” Ella cried, rounding the table in a couple of strides to envelop Chloe in a tight hug. “Are you okay?”

Chloe accepted the hug, realizing her hands were shaking as she rested them on Ella’s back. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. I drove back here because I needed to think and,” she flapped her hands in the air over Ella’s shoulders, “here I am.”

“Okay. Okay. Jeez,” Ella said, stepping back and shoving her hands through her hair. “There’s… a lot to unpack there. First of all, I’m glad you’re alright. And I’m really sorry I pushed you towards Pierce when he’s  _ obviously _ a giant bag of dicks. I mean,  _ yikes.” _

Chloe found herself laughing for the first time since this disastrous evening had begun. “Yeah,  _ yikes _ . And you don’t need to apologize, Ella, you had no way of knowing.”

“Yeah, but, I feel bad that I pushed you towards him at all, bag of dicks or not, when clearly you got all  _ that _ going on with Lucifer!” Ella gave her a gentle punch on the shoulder. “Go Decker, I had no idea.”

“No, there’s – there’s nothing  _ going on. _ There was one time I thought – but it didn’t happen and, after that I thought Lucifer didn’t feel that way about me and was trying to make that clear. So when Pierce showed some interest I thought,” she gestured helplessly, “I don’t know. I guess I just wanted to move on.”

Ella did a bizarre little wiggle on the spot as though she was trying to contain herself. “Girl,  _ go to him!” _

“Who, Pierce?” Chloe was taken aback.

“No, you dummy,  _ Lucifer!” _ Ella blurted.

“You think I should…” Chloe swallowed nervously, “pursue something with him?”

“Oh, my God,  _ yes!  _ Could it be any more perfect? He’s in love with you, and you’re –”

“Wait, hold on,” Chloe said frantically, “he’s  _ what? _ How – how do you know he’s –  _ that?” _

“Dude,” Ella said solemnly, “it’s  _ so  _ obvious.”

“Since when?” she asked weakly.

“Since  _ always. _ I mean, definitely as long as I’ve known you both. Completely gone on you. But if you want proof, look no further than tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“Decker,” Ella took her by the shoulders, looking at her fervently. “He  _ kissed  _ a tissue just because it had your lipstick print on it. Just because your lips had touched it. Probably because he thought he’d never get the real thing. And he put it in his pocket. Like a favour for a knight, or pressing a flower. That is…. that is some  _ high fucking romance, _ Chloe.”

“Ella!” she didn’t think she’d ever heard the diminutive scientist swear like that before.

“Sorry, sorry,” Ella raised her hands. “I just really need this to be clear to you. He is  _ in love  _ with you.”

Lucifer was in love with her. It startled her to realize that she already knew that. Of _course_ she did.

“Lucifer is in love with me,” she whispered through numb lips. Her hands crept up to cover her cheeks, peeking over her fingertips with round, round eyes.

“Yes,  _ obviously!”  _ Ella exclaimed. “Did you really not know?! I thought you just didn’t feel the same way, and were trying to keep him at arm’s length. Seemed like an uncomfortable situation to me, but hey, I’m not one to judge.”

“No, I…”

Ella let her trail off into silence, leaving her to reel for a minute. “So?”

“Mm?”

“So… do you have feelings for him?

“I… do,” Chloe replied dazedly, “I have for a  _ while _ .”

“Are you…?”

“I’m in love with him too,” she mumbled, again amazed at how little that  _ didn’t  _ surprise her.

Ella was practically vibrating on the spot from ill-contained excitement. She reminded Chloe of Trixie on Chocolate Cake Wednesdays.  _ “So?” _

“So I should… go talk to him?”

_ “Yes! _ Oh my God. Do you want me to drive you? No, that’s dumb, we’d have to leave one of our cars here, never mind. Do you want me to… I dunno, tailgate you to Lux so you don’t lose confidence?”

Chloe giggled a little frantically. “No, that’s alright, you should go home, you deserve to relax after listening to my crisis. Just –” she looked down at herself. “Do I look okay?”

Ella surveyed her critically. “You look  _ hot _ ,” she pronounced with satisfaction. “What underwear are you wearing, though? Is it a good panties day?”

“Ella!”

“I just want you to have a good time!”

_ “Ella,” _

“Okay, okay. Let’s get you out of here.”

*

They were halfway through the office when Chloe suddenly found herself shoved down, with surprising strength, behind a desk.

“What– ?”

“Lieutenant Pierce!” hailed Ella loudly, “You’re working late tonight!” Chloe froze. She could hear his footsteps striding past rapidly.

“Uh-huh. Have you seen Decker?”

“Nope. No, sir. Haven’t seen her for hours. Think she went home. End of her shift, ya know? Definitely not around here.”

“Hm. Let me know immediately if you see her.”

“Sir, yes, sir!” Ella chirped, just this side of suspiciously chipper.

The door to Pierce’s office slammed shut, and Ella, grabbing Chloe by the arm, hissed “Let’s get out of here before he gets suspicious and checks the security footage.”

Ella confined herself to a quick, but heartfelt hug before the two women went their separate ways in the garage. “Go get ‘em. And  _ get some _ .”

For the second time that night, Chloe found herself occupied with thoughts of Lucifer as she drove. For all that she was sure of herself, and her own feelings, she had been thoroughly shaken up, and her jangled nerves made her jittery. She smiled stiffly at the bouncer who lifted the velvet rope at Lux’s front entrance, letting her in with a deferential nod (much to the chagrin of the queueing revelers at the door), and stood at the top of the stairs of the club, scanning the floor nervously. He was nowhere to be seen, and a quick word to the bartender confirmed that he hadn’t been in all evening.

It would be polite, she knew, to wait for him down here, and indulge in one of the free drinks the bar staff had standing orders to serve her. But it was too noisy, there were too many distractions, and she wanted peace, quiet and familiarity. As soon as the elevator doors closed on her, she was ensconced in silence, and she breathed a heaving sigh. The penthouse was equally silent, bathed in the warm, dim glow of the bar’s backlight. She tried to settle herself on Lucifer’s indecently comfortable couch, but couldn’t stop her legs from bouncing compulsively, and took to pacing up and down the glass wall that partitioned off the balcony. She refrained from pouring herself some of his top-shelf liquid courage, knowing she wanted a clear head to deal with whatever the hell she was about to do.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucifer comes home and finds Chloe waiting - for him, and for answers.

Lucifer tipped his head back to rest against the elevator wall, closing his eyes wearily. What he’d said to Linda an hour ago rang in the silence. _I think I’ve made a horrible mistake_ . He’d taken the long way home, driving by the beach he’d landed on years ago. Historically it had been somewhere he could go that made him feel peaceful, and in control, but not tonight. Tonight he just felt sick to his core. _I think I’ve made a horrible mistake._ Because if Chloe could choose someone else, then that meant choosing him had been genuine. _Real._ And it was too late. Far, far, too late. He’d made a hash of their whole relationship, scarpering off to Vegas to marry a showgirl, but then not having the strength to keep the break clean. Instead, he’d come back, selfishly desiring to be near her, and deliberately causing her pain. He’d poured salt, lemon and vinegar into the wounds he’d inflicted, anything he could do to kill her feelings for him in their cradle. No wonder she’d backed away so thoroughly that she’d bumped into Cain on the way out.

 _I think I’ve made a horrible,_ horrible _mistake._

The healing wound in his shoulder twinged with sudden, throbbing pain, and his eyes popped open. If he was feeling that, then did that mean…? But why would she be…?

The doors slid smoothly open, and he was presented with his dark, empty penthouse. Just his imagination, then. He levered himself off the back wall of the elevator and made his way over to the bar. He scrubbed a hand over his face, feeling every one of his eons as he poured himself a generous three fingers of scotch. Turning back to the room, he nearly jumped out of his skin to find Chloe standing silhouetted against the windows, twisting her hands together and looking at him with a peculiar expression. “Detective!”

“Hi,” she said, her voice rather higher than usual.

 _You’re supposed to be on your date. With_ him _._ He didn’t want to say it. He should just be grateful for any moment he got with her. Instead, he tipped his glass towards her invitingly. “Can I offer you a drink? I’m afraid I don’t keep much wine up here, but I can send down to the club to get – Detective? Are you –?” She was striding towards him with the determination of an army in her gait, and before he could finish his thought, she had grasped him by the lapels and pulled his lips down to hers.

His glass of scotch dangled nervelessly from his fingers while his free hand curled reflexively around Chloe’s back. Eyes wide open, his whole brain shorted out like a fuse, culminating into a single, emphatic exclamation mark. Once the first, sweet shock of her lips had settled into his skin, and she didn’t pull away or tell him the punchline, he felt blindly behind him for the surface of the bar, plunking his scotch glass clumsily down on the marble. He should pull away from her. Ask her what she meant by this. Make sure she wasn’t just drunk and trying to console herself again. That would be the right thing to do. What he _should_ do.

He didn’t. Instead, he brought his hands up slowly, cradling her face in the way he’d always wanted to, and let his eyes drift closed. He pressed back against her, letting his mouth mould to Chloe’s as she sought and coaxed and asked. He let himself believe in her kiss, if only for this moment. It was lovelier even than his treasured memory of their kiss on the beach, more whole in its simplicity, somehow. There was nothing beyond the slow dance of their lips, the gentle push and pull, the sweet taste of her that would linger long after the inevitability of her departure. For a moment, if only a moment, he could be hers.

It ended all too quickly. Before he was ready, Chloe was drawing back, the warmth of her growing distant. He felt cold, like a planet suddenly beyond the reach of its sun, circling around again, and again, and again, in an endless cycle to find her light. But she was looking at him with a faint smile on her face.

“Lucifer,” she said, as though his name was a complete sentence.

He thought he probably looked as he felt, unguarded, dumbfounded, more than a little broken open.

“You’ve got lipstick all over your mouth,” she whispered into the static silence between them, finally releasing his lapel to trace her thumb over his bottom lip, where her colours must be smeared.

“I could say the same of you,” he rasped uselessly. Neither of them moved to rectify the matter. He couldn’t say, _if you knew how long I’ve dreamed of you, of your mouth, your kiss, you’d run._ “Detective, not that I’m not pleased to be on the receiving end, but may I ask what precisely brought this on? I could have sworn you were on your way to a date with the lieutenant.”

“Yeah, I…” she glanced down, and he wished she would look back up at him. Chloe had always been a puzzle to him, but without the small light that her eyes shed upon the closely guarded secrets of her desires, Lucifer was in the dark. He could never read her as he’d like to, but that didn’t lessen the surprise of her hand snaking its way inside his jacket. He was too disconcerted to remember why he should stop her when she found the contents of his inner pocket, and by the time she retreated, the folded tissue square clutched in her hand, it was too late. She let it fall open in her palm, and he knew he was sunk. The slightly smudged remnant of her lipstick-kiss looked up at them both, innocuous and damning. A hot flush of shame scorched the back of his neck.

“Detective, I – I can explain,” he stumbled, not sure how he was going to prevaricate his way out of this one. “I assure you, it’s not what you might think.”

“Lucifer,”

“No, you’re right, it’s a dreadful betrayal of your trust, I quite understand, and you’ve every right to be angry.”

“Lucifer, it’s –”

“Wildly inappropriate, I know! You must be furious, and I can _promise_ that this will never happen again –”

 _“Lucifer.”_ She took hold of his chin. That was new, and unexpected. He’d anticipated something more akin to her impressive right-hook. Her grip forced his gaze to meet hers. “I’m not angry.”

He searched her eyes, examined her face for the tell-tale signs that in her, he always struggled to find. “No, you’re not, are you?” His eyebrows drew together. “Why not?”

“Because I understand why you took it.”

He studied her solemnly. That couldn’t be true. Doubt suffused his voice. “Do you truly, Detective?”

She bit her lip (maddening). “Yeah. I think I do.”

“Oh,” he said dumbly.

Looking down at the fragile imprint of her kiss, held in the sacred space between their bodies, Chloe was silent for a long moment, and Lucifer felt as though he was waiting for a verdict. There was nothing left of his façade, weak as it had been to begin with. Whatever she said, whatever she asked, he would have to give it to her, and that terrified him more than his Fall from the Heavens ever had. He felt as though he were falling _now,_ wheeling through the air in a free, uncontrolled swan dive, with no idea how or where he would land.

“How long have you felt this way?” Her voice was quiet, nearly expressionless, and Lucifer swallowed.

“I’m not sure.” He sounded hoarse, inelegant. “For a long time, I think. I didn’t know what it was at first. I’d never felt anything like this. Before.”

Finally, she looked up at him, and he was caught. There was an openness to her that he hadn’t seen in months, as she slowly drew her walls about her and a wrenching distance had grown between them, an aching ocean of hurt on both sides that Lucifer just didn’t know how to reach across. She showed it all to him, now. “But you ran. I felt the same and you ran.” Lucifer’s stomach lurched despairingly. _Felt._ Past tense. “I came to find you when I got out of hospital, when we were so close to being... _something,_ but you’d gone.” He could see tears gathering at the edges of her beautiful, hurt eyes. “Why did you do that, if you feel this way about me?”

“I was scared,” he replied, miserable, ashamed.

Her lips were turned downwards. Why was it that lately, he was never the one who made her smile? “Scared of how you felt? I wasn’t going to push you, Lucifer. I didn’t expect you to suddenly be a different person, or do anything you didn’t want to do.”

“No, no, I know that,” Lucifer replied pleadingly, “It wasn’t - I wasn’t - I was so happy, Detective. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier than when you kissed me on that beach. I wanted everything, anything you would give me. But then I - my mother asked to meet me.”

“What? Your - your mom?” Clearly, whatever Chloe had been expecting him to say, that wasn’t it. “You mean your stepmom? Charlotte?”

“Not exactly, it’s - it’s complicated. I’ll explain it another time,” he said hastily, when Chloe opened her mouth to ask. “I promise, Detective. My mother told me to come and meet her, and she told me - _showed_ me something that convinced me - at the time, and for a long time afterwards - that what you felt for me wasn’t real.”

“Not - what do you mean, _not real?_ And how would - what has your mom got to do with - _anything?”_ Chloe was pulling away from him, leaning out of reach, her expression bewildered. “Did she think I was lying to you?”

“She thought you’d been put in my path deliberately by my Father, in some plan designed to hurt me, and she - well, it doesn’t matter how, but she managed to convince me of the same.”

“What?” she cried. “So all this time you thought I was - what, some kind of sleeper agent, just spying on you for your dad? You really thought I'd do that?”

“No, no!” He said frantically, “I never thought that you’d do so intentionally. I never believed that you _wanted_ to hurt me, but you don’t know my Father! I thought He was forcing your feelings for me upon you, making you feel something that otherwise, you,” he gestured helplessly, his hand falling empty to his side, “wouldn't.”

Chloe’s eyes were welling with tears, clearly on the verge of crying with frustration and hurt. “I don’t know what that _means_ , Lucifer. Please, just...” she put her balled up fists on his chest and thumped once, as though trying to hammer on the wall that his secrets and half-truths had made between them. “Just explain it to me in a way I can understand. I want to help, I want to know you, but _please_ ,” tears spilled loose down her cheeks and his whole body ached for her. Taking her hands tentatively in his where they rested on his waistcoat, he froze in surprise when she dropped her head onto his chest and started crying, the stress and upheaval of the whole night finally catching up. Lucifer felt wretched, casting about for what to do. Finally, he settled on wrapping his arms around her. It seemed to be the right move, as she pulled herself closer and grabbed fistfuls of his waistcoat in her hands.

“Detective,” he started a little desperately, but she only cried harder. “Chloe,” he tried again, “do you remember before, when I said there was something I wanted to show you? Something which would explain everything?”

“Mm-hm,” Chloe mumbled, quieting a little.

“I didn’t lie to you, I really did intend to show you the truth. The whole truth,” he took a shaky breath. “But I couldn’t. Not,” he continued, forestalling her when he sensed her oncoming protest, “not because I didn’t want to, or because I don’t trust you. But for the very practical and literal reason that what I intended to show you no longer seems to exist. I know, darling,” he added sympathetically when she finally looked up at him, expression miserable and stained with tears. “I know you’re confused, and frustrated. So was I. I thought I had lost my chance to tell you the whole truth, but lately it’s occurred to me that I used that near miss as an excuse to _avoid_ telling you the truth.”

Chloe nodded. “Why?” she asked, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. 

Lucifer grimaced and offered her his pocket square. He tried to think of what Dr. Linda would say. “I suppose it’s because… because I thought that if I told you nothing at all, I could avoid how the truth might hurt you. Or frighten you. And I could bear anything, but to be the object of your fear.”

“So _you_ were afraid instead? Of my reaction?”

“I… yes.” There was no denying that. “But instead of it all going back to the way it was, I only managed to push you away.” He mentally braced himself. “There’s a… different kind of proof that I can show you. I didn’t show you before, because I wanted to show you _me,_ and they're not who I am - not anymore - and it felt too much like lying. And that is something I _never_ want to do. Especially not to you.” Gathering her hands into his, he pressed a kiss to each one and stepped away from her. “But if showing you this part of myself is the only way to tell the truth, then I will.” He dropped her hands.

“Lucifer, I still have _no_ idea what you’re talking about. You’re not making any sense.”

His laugh in response was a little manic. “Give me a moment and I promise, everything you’ve ever wondered about me will make sense. Of a sort.”

“Wh--?”

Tugging off his jacket, he walked past her, further into the room, then turned to face her, fiddling nervously with his cufflinks. “As you can see, Detective, there is nothing standing between you and the exit. You have my word that I will not follow you if - when - you run, and until then you have my word that unless you tell me to, I will not move from this spot.”

“What the _hell?”_ Chloe looked rattled, disturbed by the implications of his words.

Lucifer chuckled bleakly. “Apt indeed,” he muttered. Then with a movement like shrugging, he let his wings unfurl from his shoulders.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With a movement like shrugging, Lucifer let his wings unfurl from his shoulders.

As reactions to divinity went, Chloe’s could have been much worse. As soon as his feathery nuisances had sprouted from behind him, her expression fell from distress and confusion, to absolutely blank. Not even shock or fear showed on her face. True to his word, Lucifer didn’t move a muscle, even holding every feather still as stone. He tried to be patient, he really did, but after a full fifty-seven seconds of complete silence, he began to worry that he’d pushed her into catatonia.

“Well,” he muttered, “say something.”

Chloe’s lips moved, as though she were trying to figure out how words worked. “Wings,” she finally breathed.

Lucifer nodded solemnly. “So it would seem.”

“You have _wings_.”

“Can’t deny it.”

“It’s all true,” her voice was rising. “Oh God, it’s all true.”

Lucifer nodded again, silently. He had no idea what to do, or say.

“You’re the devil,” her hands came up to cover her mouth. “You’re the actual _Devil_.” And there was the fear he’d dreaded all this time. She took a stumbling step backwards, and all at once Lucifer just felt very, very tired.

“I am.”

Apparently frozen herself now, she stared, and stared. Lucifer had to consciously stop his shoulders from hunching defensively. She deserved as long as she needed to process the no doubt brain-melting terror that would accompany this revelation, but he wished it was over. He wished she was already gone, wished he could skip the horrified gaze so he could be on his own again, with his wall of top-shelf alcohol and an all-you-can-snort smorgasbord of narcotics to fend off the memory of her terrified face in this moment.

With another step back, she sat down abruptly on his piano bench. The tissue square imprinted with her lipstick drifted to the marble floor from her inert fingers. He watched it fall hopelessly.

“You said you cut your wings off,” Chloe said faintly.

“They grew back when I was in the desert.”

“That can… happen?”

“No. Or at least, not to my knowledge. They never did before that. A cosmic joke played by my Father, I think.”

What little colour remained in Chloe’s cheeks drained from them, leaving her stark white. “Your _Father_. Oh, my G--” she cut herself off with a strangled sound.

His lips twisted upwards a little in a dull parody of his smirk. “Quite.”

“Oh, shit,” she gasped, beginning to shake. She dropped her head into her hands, breathing erratically. “I can’t - Lucifer, I can’t --”

“Detective?” He regarded her with some alarm.

“I can’t - can’t breathe - properly - would you -” she was starting to hyperventilate, “would you please - get over here - Lucifer?”

“You want me to… come closer to you?” he clarified, baffled.

_“Lucifer!”_ she gasped.

“Right, yes,” he pulled his wings back in and rushed to her, hovering his hands indecisively over her before settling on patting her back. When she didn’t recoil or scream, he sat next to her gingerly, wrapping one tentative arm around her shoulders and taking her hand in his. “Try and breathe evenly, Detective, like this,” he gave an exaggerated demonstration. “Come on now, can’t have you passing out in my flat. What would I tell your offspring? ‘Sorry, urchin, your mother can’t pick you up as she’s currently lying unconscious on my Italian marble’?”

Chloe gave a little choking laugh, her breathing starting to regulate. “Dan’s got her tonight, but I take your point.”

She was still shaking like a leaf in a storm, and hesitantly, not sure if this would send her back into a hyperventilating spiral, Lucifer unfurled one wing. She only jumped slightly, so he draped it lightly over her shoulders. The soothing effects of divinity were instantly recognizable; she started to breathe calmly again, and her muscles relaxed. “Better?” he asked cautiously.

“Yeah,” she replied in some amazement. “Are you doing that?” The look on her face as she looked up at his wing was one of wonder, and he suddenly felt uncomfortable. 

“Yes,” he mumbled, “side effect of divinity. Though I haven’t used it in a few millennia.” Pulling his wing back into its pocket dimension, he dropped his arm away from her shoulders. “Drink?” It was just an excuse to move away from her, but he found the ritual of pouring a drink quietened some of his building agitation. He didn’t understand why she hadn’t run. She was so clearly afraid.

Busying himself at the bar, Lucifer waited tensely for her verdict. She didn't speak, and when he looked nervously over his shoulder, she was staring fixedly at him again. Running and screaming still didn’t seem to be forthcoming. Perhaps she just hadn’t had the chance to quite grasp what being the devil meant. “I imagine you want to know about Hell. Or whether I’m here to steal your soul, or start the apocalypse, or otherwise sink the world into chaos, starting with LA.”

“No,” Chloe looked a little surprised at her unthinking reply, then bit her lip. “I mean… are you? Here to do any of that?”

His lips pressed into a line. “I am not. And I don’t lie.”

“Right,” she nodded. “I do have questions, obviously. More than I can put into words right now. This is just,” she rubbed the side of her face, “ _so_ much.” Lapsing into silence again, she wrapped her arms loosely around herself and seemed to fall into deep contemplation.

His agitation heightened. There was an uncomfortable knot of _something_ growing in his stomach. He couldn’t work out what it was (he’d need Linda for that), but he did _not_ like it. Why wasn’t she screaming? Crying, running? Had he done it wrong? Had he broken her? Had the sight of his wings melted her brain, as they had done to that shady auctioneer? She wasn’t supposed to be so _calm_.

“What’s _wrong_?” He finally snapped, try as he might to restrain himself. “Why aren’t you afraid?”

Her gaze lurched up to his and he saw what she was holding back. “Afraid? I am _terrified!”_ Even though this was what he had expected, Lucifer’s heart seemed to break in two, one half migrating into his throat and the other half sinking to somewhere near his knees. “Everything I have ever believed about the world, the universe, all of it, is _wrong_ . God exists. God _exists._ There is a _God._ And He’s your _dad_ .” Chloe sprang to her feet, fingers pressing into her temples, and started to pace. “I’ve been an atheist since I was six. I didn’t even believe in _Santa_ . And now, what? Do I have to worry about everything else being real, too? If angels and demons and God exist, do vampires, and alien abductions, and I don’t know, _Mothman_ ?” Her eyes widened, and she came to a dead stop. “Oh my G - I mean, oh shit, demons! Is Maze a demon?” At his guarded nod, Chloe released a short, slightly hysterical laugh. “My ex-roommate is a demon. A literal demon. I always assumed when she said that it was just a sex thing. _Don’t,”_ she raised a finger warningly in Lucifer’s direction, “say a word.” He closed his mouth. “And as well as my whole world view being overturned, there’s the afterlife to worry about. Do I have to worry about going to hell? What are t--”

“No,” Lucifer shot out sharply, unable to restrain himself at that. “Rest assured, Detective, as long as I exist, you will never have to worry about your eternal fate. I can’t do much about heaven, but if the harp-playing cretins up there are ever stupid enough to deny you access to the pearly gates, I will personally make sure you don’t spend a second more in one of hell’s dungeons than it takes for me to fly down and bust you out.” He gave a bleak smirk. “I _do_ have some pull down there, you know.”

Unfortunately, his weak attempt at humour didn’t land. Chloe merely gaped at him in consternation. “See? It’s stuff like _that_ which scares me. I am _terrified_ that I have the King of Hell on speed-dial. I can’t process that, Lucifer! It’s too much! So yes, I am _very_ afraid, of everything that this means.” 

Lucifer looked down, hunching his shoulders nearly to his ears and swirling scotch around his glass. After all, he had asked for it. 

He heard Chloe take a deep, shuddering breath. "But _of you?_ No, I'm not afraid.” His head popped up like a marionette’s. She was looking at him with eyes that were still round and slightly panicked. “Everything about this is terrifying, but not you. Even if the way I see everything has changed, you haven’t. I mean, you're still the same person that you were five minutes ago. Right?" Despite her professed conviction, she still sounded unsure.

He nodded, mute from confusion.

"Okay. Okay then. I can work with that. You're the same person I've always known. All that's changed is the heading that I put you under in my head."

"Oh yes?" Lucifer did his best to smile lecherously. "What heading did you have for me before?" 

Chloe leveled a look at him that was a comfortingly familiar mix of affection and exasperation. "Most of the time, _annoying."_ A tiny smile found its way onto her face. “Besides, it’s… kinda difficult to be scared of you when you’ve still got my lipstick smeared all over your mouth.”

Lucifer laughed, but it was a more tremulous sound than he’d intended to make. Raising his hand to his mouth, he swiped at the excess colour but made no attempt to remove it.

Sighing shakily, Chloe took a seat on the couch and gestured for him to join her. For the second time that night, Lucifer abandoned his scotch on the bar, and followed her summons as though she was holding his leash. He left her a good three feet of space, but angled his body towards her, a little dazed from the very idea of sitting next to her, after his conviction of five minutes ago that he’d never see her again.

Clearing her throat and squaring her shoulders, Chloe made a visible effort to appear composed. “So you’re an angel.”

“No,” Lucifer didn’t mean to be so sharp, but his whole body twitched in indignation at the statement, “that’s not who I am. Not anymore, or for a very long time.”

“Okay,” she replied carefully, “so you _were_ an angel.”

He gave a reluctant, jerky nod of assent. “Dad may have stuck those blasted things back on, but they’re not me. I’m the Devil, Detective, I have been since He kicked me out. Even if I never wanted to be.” Chloe inclined her head, once again deep in thought. Impatiently, Lucifer waited. He hated, hated, _hated_ not being able to read her. After still more, excruciating silence, he burst out, “Why are you taking this so well, Detective? I still don’t understand why you haven’t run.”

Looking down, Chloe’s expression was pensive. “I don’t know. It is a _lot_ . Make no mistake, my life has been turned on its head and I can’t promise that I won’t have several, or probably several dozen freak-outs down the line. I absolutely will. I’m freaking out right _now._ Consider it ongoing until further notice. But I guess part of it is that… I wasn’t raised with this stuff. I don’t have an in-built, superstitious fear of the devil, because I never put any stock in the idea of evil. At least, evil that isn't human in origin. And having known you for two years,” she shrugged, “I still don’t.” Chloe looked at him, direct if still a bit wide-eyed. “If I have ever been able to trust my own judgment in anything, it’s that I _know_ you aren’t evil.”

A lump rose in Lucifer’s throat rose, and he thought he might cry, or laugh, or both. “How do you _know?”_ He nearly begged.

“You told me,” she pointed out, “and you don’t lie.”

“But what if I was wrong? What if I am evil?”

“I don’t believe it. I don’t see it when I look at you.”

“You think that because you haven’t seen all of me. If you knew, if you truly _saw…_ ” trailing off hopelessly, Lucifer closed his eyes and leaned his face in his hands, feeling the phantom echo of the hellfire that had once lived under his skin. “There’s another side to me, that I can’t show you. I don’t know why. It’s been taken from me, but it’s there, underneath. I have another face, which is a reflection of what I am, in my heart. If you saw that, you would have no trouble believing that I am everything they say.”

Face still buried in his hands, Lucifer couldn’t bear to look at her. Silence stretched, _again_. He’d never realized how terrifying the quiet could be.

“Is it… is your other face red? With… red eyes, like fire?”

His head jerked up. “What? You’ve _seen_ it?” It was his turn to stare, horror-struck. _“When?”_ He choked out.

“Right back at the start of our partnership, in the warehouse, just before I shot you in the leg,” Chloe admitted, shamefaced. “I saw it in reflection. It was why I was nearly ready to believe you, but then I shot you, and you bled. I tried to tell myself later that it was a trick of the light, but since then it’s been one of the many things about you that I couldn’t quite explain.”

“So you’ve--” Lucifer stuttered, “you’ve seen it!”

“I guess so,” she confirmed nervously. “Is that it, your skin and eyes go red?”

He didn’t know whether to be affronted or amused. “Essentially yes, Detective, but it’s not a simple matter of pigmentation. It’s - it’s not a pretty sight.”

“Okay,” her tone was expectant.

This was really the last thing he wanted to talk about, but he’d come this far. “When I was cast down from Heaven - when I fell - I’m afraid it was rather literal. Bloody Milton got that much right, at least,” he couldn’t resist from grumbling. It was worth it to see Chloe’s lips twitch upwards. “I burned. Immortality kept me from dying, and kept me in a constant state of healing and burning again for - I don’t exactly know how long. A while, anyway. It took its toll, even on an angelic body, and the result is… well, it’s not unlike raw meat to look at, to tell the truth.” Chloe’s hands were clamped over her mouth now, tears once again glistening at the edges of her eyes. He gave her an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, I know it’s not pleasant to hear about. Consider yourself lucky I can’t show you,” he finished dryly.

“I don’t care about that!” Her hands came down on her knees with a smack, and she sounded nearly angry. “I care that it hurt you! That sounds--” she shook her head vehemently, “ _unthinkably_ awful. I’m so sorry you had to go through that, Lucifer.” There were tears once again collecting on her lashes, spilling over her cheeks, and once again Lucifer was well and truly baffled by her.

“Not to worry, Detective,” he tried to reassure her, “it was a very, _very_ long time ago.”

Although he wasn’t sure how she cleared the three feet between their bodies in one movement, the next thing he knew, she had practically tackled him in a hug, nearly headbutting him in the throat as she buried her face in his neck. A bit panicked, he patted her on the shoulders, mumbling “There, there.”

She sat up again, looking miserable, and in a move which was disconcertingly maternal, took his face in her hands, examining it as though she expected to find the evidence of his fall still there. “I know you said it’s gone, though I still don’t understand that bit, but…” more tears spilled free. “Does it still hurt?”

He was too flummoxed to do anything more than sit still and stare. “No - not as such, but - forgive me, Detective, you did hear the bit about my other face looking like something from a horror movie cut-scene, didn’t you?”

Stroking her fingers feather-light over his jaw, she looked at him sternly. “Lucifer, everyone has bits of themselves - inside or out - that they’d rather others didn’t see. But being in a relationship means trusting the other person to see your ugly bits and not run. To love you in spite, and maybe even because of them.”

He snorted. “Warts and all, you mean?” Then he realized what she’d said, and his jaw dropped off the bottom of his face. Her face went pink. “Wait, you said - did you mean...?”

“Which part?” She deadpanned, cheeks still blushing.

“Don’t tease,” he pleaded, “it’s already been a very, very long night, Detective.”

“Oh, well, maybe I should get going and let you get a good night’s sleep.” Getting halfway to her feet, Chloe giggled like a schoolgirl when he yanked her back down and wrapped his arms securely around her.

“You know, Detective, I don’t think I’m inclined to let you go. Not until honour is satisfied.”

“Oh, you want satisfaction, is that it?” She drifted her lips close to his, leaning back when he tried to kiss her. He went with her, arms still locked around her, until they both nearly fell off the couch.

“Detective,” he whined, managing to stretch the word out for at least six syllables. He was still target-locked on her lips, and she slipped a hand over his mouth.

“Why don’t you try calling me Chloe?”

Slipping her hand from his face to his collar, she grabbed a fistful of fabric to anchor him to her.

“Chloe,” he breathed, and it felt like prayer.

“Lucifer,” she murmured in return. “I love you. Do you love me?”

“Yes,” he nearly groaned from the bliss of saying it. “Yes. Yes. Chloe, Chloe, I love you, I love you to madness, I love you--” She kissed him, practically devouring him as he kissed her back with desperate euphoria. He didn’t hold back this time, putting everything into the delicious push-pull of their lips, the sweet slide of their tongues and the slightest scrape of teeth even as his brain tried to catch up with the last ten minutes. Was this _real?_ Had she really just learned he was the Devil incarnate, Satan walking the Earth, and told him she loved him anyway? Really? _Really?_ For a moment he forgot that his arm was the only thing holding up their bodies and tried to wrap it around her waist, only for them to topple off the couch. Chloe gave a little shriek of surprise and grabbed his shoulders in a vice-like grip. Lucifer landed on his back and Chloe landed on him, forcing all the breath out of him, and he very narrowly avoided knocking their foreheads together.

“Oh…” He lay on his back, a bit stunned. “Whoops.”

Chloe dropped her face onto his chest, heaving with muffled laughter.

“Right, erm,” said Lucifer, “sorry about this.” Quickly, because he was pretty sure she’d object, he scooped her up to his chest and sat them back on the sofa. She yelped a little at being lifted up so suddenly, but didn’t object or move off his lap, where he settled her sideways. “Alright?”

“Uh, yeah.” Her cheeks had gone a pretty shade of petal-pink, and her hands crept around the back of his neck, anchoring in his hair. “This is _really_ not how I saw my night going.”

“Ah, yes. The lieutenant.” Jealousy, unexpected and viciously hot, spiralled in his belly. His hand on Chloe’s leg tightened for a moment, before he made himself relax. She was here, with him. And even if she had chosen to spend the evening with Pierce, he’d have no right to feel covetous. Dad knew he’s done nothing to deserve her. “What happened to Axara’s concert?” He tried to sound as innocuous, as casual as he could, but was sure she’d heard his real question, anyway. _Why are you here with me, instead of him?_

“Oh,” she looked down, frowning. “Nothing, I guess.”

His upset-detective-spidey-sense tingled. “Chloe? Did something happen?”

“No,” she replied, too quickly. “I mean…” She seemed to reconsider. “Kind of. Not really.”

Ducking his head to try and catch her gaze, Lucifer pulled her a little closer. “What happened, darling?”

“I saw you. I forgot something and went back into the precinct, and I saw you at my desk.” She pressed her thumb to his lips with a wondering expression. Lucifer kissed the pad absently, waiting to see where her story led. “I didn’t know what to do. I thought that whatever you might have felt for me was long gone, and I’d decided that whatever little spark I had with Pierce, it was worth chasing it, if it let me move on.”

“Chloe, I’m so--” 

She rested her fingertips against his lips. “I know. I know you’re sorry. I have a lot to be sorry for, too, but that’s not what this is. We can talk about it later, but you need to know that I forgive you.”

A wave of dizzy, rushing _love_ swept over Lucifer, but he held his tongue. It was her turn to speak.

“But then I saw you, and...and it all changed. I went to Axara’s concert, because I said I would, and I kept telling myself there was no point in thinking about you, or wondering whether you might have feelings for me, because Pierce was the one who asked me out. But when I got there, and looked at him, there was just...nothing. Not like when it’s you and me. When it’s you.” Her eyes looked into his, so deep and so open that it was like falling into oblivion all over again, but he wasn’t scared this time. He would leap, wingless in freefall, if he knew that she was waiting for him.

“And then I realized that I wasn’t being fair. I wasn’t being fair to me, trying to force myself into feeling something that I just...didn’t. And I wasn’t being fair to Pierce, treating him like a consolation prize, just a poor substitute for something - some _one_ who he could never replace.”

“I should hope _not,”_ Lucifer sniffed. “But really, love, you shouldn’t be too concerned about the lieutenant’s feelings. There are things about him, which...well. He’s certainly not worthy of your concern.”

Unexpectedly, Chloe snorted. “Yeah. I kind of got that idea.”

Lucifer’s insides went cold. “What did he do?” He tried not to tighten his arms around her.

“He had a hand on my waist, and when I tried to leave, he wouldn’t let me go. It wasn’t _violent,”_ she assured Lucifer hastily, “and it didn’t hurt. But I had to distract him to get away, but I’m not...one hundred percent sure what would have happened if I hadn’t got out of there.” She frowned, troubled. “Before, I would never have thought he’d hurt me, but right then, I...I wasn’t sure.”

“Then you did exactly the right thing in getting away from him, love, and I’m very glad you did. I hope your ‘distraction’ involved kneeing him soundly in the bollocks?”

Chloe laughed slightly, grim expression lightening, and Lucifer lightened with her. “No, but that was Plan B.”

He smoothed a hand around the dip of her waist, wanting to replace the ghost of Cain’s irreverent touch with his. “I’m glad you’re safe,” he said simply, lacking the words to tell her that he would kill, fight and die to keep her so.

The hand still anchored in his hair tugged gently, reassuringly. “I got to my car, and drove back to the precinct. Ella and I talked for a bit, about...things.” Her cheeks went that adorable shade of pink again, and Lucifer grinned.

“About me?”

“Yeah, you great big narcissist, about you. Don’t let it go to your head.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He smirked in contentment.

“I was on my way out again, about to come see you, when Pierce came into the station. Ella spotted him and made sure he didn’t see me, but he said he was looking for me. I don’t know what he wanted, or what he would have said if he’d found me there. I just knew I didn’t want to see him.” She bit her lip, troubled. “I don’t like that he followed me there.”

“He’s not…” Lucifer cast about for a way to put this. “Pierce is not a good man. I know,” he sighed, “I know that’s rich coming from me, but it’s true. There are things about him you need to know.”

“Okay,” Chloe said hesitantly. “First of all - you _are_ a good man. And I will _not,”_ she added sternly when he opened his mouth to protest, “be taking any counter-arguments on that. But for the rest of it - can we not talk about it right now? It’s just --” she shifted closer to him, and Lucifer didn’t understand why she looked suddenly nervous. “I think I just want to - be with you, tonight. And we can worry about the rest of it tomorrow. I’ve missed you.” Tentatively, she rested her forehead against his, small hands finding his cheekbones. Lucifer couldn’t stop himself from closing the gap, kissing her as he never thought he would, feeling the way she responded so whole-heartedly, so artlessly to him.

“I’ve missed you too, Chloe,” he told her distractedly between kisses, “and I suppose I can postpone taking Pierce’s arms and legs off until tomorrow, if you’d prefer me to stay here.”

“Mm-hmm,” she mumbled, her lips leading an exploratory mission down his jaw. With a shift, she resettled herself so that she was straddling his lap, and his hands fell with automatic eagerness to the swell of her hips.

“There’s, um,” he tried to get it out before he became too wholly distracted. “There’re other things you should know. To do with, er,” his Adam’s apple bobbed against her lips as she worked her way down his throat, “to do with you.” He didn’t know quite how to broach the subject - _you’re a literal miracle of God Almighty, who you didn’t believe existed half an hour ago._ Was there an easier way to say that?

Chloe sighed against the other side of his throat, and the gust of warm air that she sent ghosting over his earlobe made Lucifer’s eyes roll back in his head. She pulled back to look at him, and he couldn’t stop how his face fell at the loss of her proximity. “Is it anything immediately important? Like, does it make a difference to this exact moment?”

Lucifer remembered with a heady rush that even if he didn’t know exactly why his Father had put her here, he’d been wrong. Chloe had _chosen_ him - she had chosen _him_ \- and he couldn’t stop the giddy smile lighting up his face. “No, I don’t believe it does, Detective.”

Mirroring his smile with one of her own, she nodded in satisfaction. “Okay, then.”

Lucifer tugged her back to him, hands reverential and insistent, and lips seeking hers. Before she met him, Chloe halted him with a swipe of her fingers over his mouth. Her hand came away a smeared, lipstick pink.

“I’ve made such a mess of you,” she grinned.

“Mmm,” hummed Lucifer. “I can’t tell you how many fantasies I’ve had about exactly this. Shall we see how much more of a mess we can make?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm taking votes: Do you want a) some sexy times, b) a reckoning for Pierce/Cain, c) all of the above, or d) none of the above and end it here. Thanks for reading, if you enjoyed please do leave me a comment!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 1 of the continuation/ending that won the popular vote: The Smut. Obviously, please observe the rating change.  
> PSA: This chapter is completely skippable if you don't want to read The Sex Times. Nothing important to the rest of the plot happens.

“Are you sure about this?” Lucifer asked anxiously as she went to work unbuttoning his shirt. “I mean, you haven’t somehow forgotten who I am, have you? Are you sure this isn’t the start of a mental breakdown?” Chloe gave him a look, still perched in his lap, then picked up one of his wrists to undo his cufflinks. “You could be in shock. This could be a very elaborate fugue state.”

“Lucifer,” she said patiently, dropping the two halves of his cufflink on the couch beside them. “I’m not in shock. It was _a_ shock, yes. This whole night has been a shock. But I’m in my right mind, and I’d like to spend the night with you, if you’d like that too.” Lucifer nodded, still looking slightly poleaxed. She paused, regarding him carefully. Maybe this was too much for _him._ “It’s okay if you don’t want to have sex right now, Lucifer. I get that tonight’s been a lot for you, too.”

His hands shot to her thighs, pulling her closer as though she was going to dissolve in his arms. “No! No, I _very_ much want to.”

Chloe looked down between them in slight surprise as their bodies pressed together. “Oh, w-- yes, you _do.”_

“I just want you to be sure. About me.” He met her gaze, then quickly looked away again. “Being the Devil, I mean - of course.”

Chloe cupped his face in her hands, gently urging his eyes back to hers. “I’m sure, babe.”

Lucifer’s expression flooded with such raw, untempered emotion that he looked nearly overwhelmed by it. “Oh, I - _Chloe.”_

She nodded, and kissed him. His arms came up around her, hands moving restlessly over her body while she returned to the task of getting Lucifer out of his shirt. Despite his lips tracing down her neck, she managed to push the fabric over his shoulders, but stopped when he jolted suddenly.

“Ow,” he said in a tone of surprise, looking down in vexation at the goddamn _stab wound_ in his shoulder.

“Oh _shit,_ Lucifer, I’m sorry!” Chloe yelled, yanking her hands away as though she’d inflicted the wound herself. “How did I not remember? You got _stabbed,_ holy shit!” For a second or two, she stared down at his shoulder, trying to reconcile what she _knew_ with what she could _see_ . “Wait, you...you _did_ get stabbed, right? I was there. I saw you pull the damn knife out. But it’s…” Healed. Not completely, the wound was still there, but it looked weeks old already.

“Devil, darling,” Lucifer replied, shrugging as though it didn’t hurt at all. “It’s one of the perks.”

She had questions - _many_ questions. But right now wasn’t the time. Impulsively, Chloe leaned down, pressing the tiniest of kisses to the wound. When she looked at him again, he was regarding her with open curiosity, and she smiled affectionately at his confusion. “What, you’ve never heard of ‘kissing it better’?”

“Mm, I’m not sure it worked. Try again?”

*

Chloe was awoken by a nose burrowing into the crook of her neck. Arms tightened briefly around her stomach, pulling her closer into the body behind her. Slitting open her eyes, she took a deep breath and tried to control the weight of her new world as it pressed down on her. _One thing at a time._ Another breath. Okay. She could do that.

To recap, Lucifer was the _actual_ Devil. He had _actual_ wings and was a son of _actual_ God. Who existed.

She’d had sex with Lucifer. The Devil. Multiple times over the past night. It had been as good as she’d always suspected it would be, and more besides.

They’d talked, too. Once the dam had been broken between them, Lucifer had told her about Pierce - or Cain, which was apparently his real name. As in, biblical Cain. The world’s first murderer. With whom she had nearly been on a date. And if that wasn’t already enough to make her brain just give up, pack its bags and leave, it seemed she herself was some sort of miracle, sent by God for purposes unknown. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to look at Amenadiel the same way again, now that she knew he was, in part, responsible for her existence.

He’d told her about going to Hell for her, about Vegas, and Candy, about all of it. The months and months they’d wasted as he tortured himself with the conviction that Chloe’s feelings were not her own, labouring under the misconception that she couldn’t possibly be free to make her own choices. If she hadn’t been so thoroughly blissed out (her arms and legs resembling something closer to cotton wool than the muscle and bone they used to be), she would have smacked him upside the head. As it was, she couldn’t manage more than languid annoyance.

“You’re a goddamn idiot, Lucifer,” she’d grumbled, glaring down at where his head rested on her stomach.

“Yes, dear,” he’d replied lazily, as he traced meandering paths down her leg with all the luxurious satisfaction of a particularly spoiled cat.

And now, here she was. Chloe Decker, spooned by the Devil. She let out a little blurt of laughter, and Lucifer stirred behind her.

“Mmf, g’back t’sleep. S’too early.” His voice was rough, buzzing through her as he mumbled sleepily into the back of her neck.

She reached a hand out of their cocoon of sheets and limbs, patting the nightstand. She found a phone - she wasn’t sure whose - and squinted at the time. “It’s an hour until I have to go.”

“Go? Nooo…” Lucifer trailed off with a whine, flailing out an arm to knock the phone from her hands. It landed somewhere in the tangled sheets, and Chloe gave a wordless, half-hearted protest as he pressed her tight to his chest, then pulled the sheet up over their heads. It settled over them, ensconcing them in their own little tent, dimly lit by the rising sun as it filtered through Lucifer’s ridiculously high thread count. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Chloe wriggled, turning herself around to burrow her face under his chin, feeling small and safe and warm in his arms. He resettled his hold around her back, curling his body around hers and tangling their legs together. “I have to go pick up Trixie from Dan’s,” she explained, voice muffled. “I’m driving her to school today.”

With a groan of reluctant admission, Lucifer’s arms loosened around her. “Fine. But for the record, I still don’t see why she can’t drive herself.”

“She’s nine.”

“And the only reason I haven’t taught her to drive myself is because you won’t let me. For some reason.”

“She’s _nine,”_ Chloe protested again, though she couldn’t help laughing.

“Yes, so you’ve said. Well, go on then,” Lucifer’s arms moved away, and he sighed dramatically. “Make your escape.”

He was joking, but Chloe thought she could hear something underneath - some melancholy that seemed so ingrained, she wondered if he even knew it was there. She thought of the case they’d once had, in which she’d had the onerous task of interviewing ninety-two of his sexual partners. How not one of them had seemed to give him a second thought after they’d walked out of his penthouse. She wondered if anyone, in his unimaginably long life, had ever stayed.

“I mean,” she said, sliding her hands around the back of his neck, raking her nails through the short hair. “I don’t have to go _just_ yet.”

“Oh, you don’t?” She could hear the smile growing in Lucifer’s voice.

“Nope. Still got an hour.”

“Well,” With one smooth movement, Lucifer rolled Chloe onto her back, following closely so that not one spare inch of space came between their bodies. “I’m sure we can find something to keep you occupied.” His mouth found hers, seeking out her kiss for the hundredth time now.

Her legs bracketed his hips, the tips of her toes pressing into the back of his thighs. They’d had enough athletic, mind-bending, back-arching, revelatory sex last night that for the moment, this was all she wanted. The sensation of his body on hers, his presence surrounding her. She felt as though she was trying to make up for lost time, pressing herself close and closer to make up for the years they’d spent _not_ touching.

When Lucifer began to slip down her body, plotting a map of open-mouthed kisses between her breasts, Chloe couldn’t help the little whine of loss. It was dumb, it was irrational, it was needy, but she _missed_ him. With wordless understanding, Lucifer laid the flat of his palm over her heart, the splay of his fingers reaching from collarbone to collarbone. She held onto his wrist as he moved further under the sheet, laying kisses on either side of her waist on his way down. His mouth found her hip-bones as his shoulders settled between her open thighs, and his palm slipped down to rest on her sternum, where she knew he would feel her heartbeat echoing down through her chest. The sheet still covered them both, enclosing them in a warm, dim cocoon as Lucifer’s mouth found her still-slick folds, and her sharp inhale was muffled by the cotton. Her back arched, and Lucifer’s arm pressed down the length of her torso as he went to work on her, his face buried between her thighs with an eagerness, a dedication that was intoxicatingly erotic all on its own. His unshaven cheeks grazed the pink marks that his stubble had left on her inner thighs the night before, and Chloe gasped, sensitive and tender to the touch.

“Lucifer,” she panted, “Lucifer, babe.” He moaned into her folds, free hand gripping her hip as he dipped his tongue inside her, seeking out her taste as though he would never be sated. Her thighs trembled, tightening around him as he chased her pleasure, his tongue, his lips, his teeth seeking out the places and rhythms that had made her come apart again and again last night. His hand slid away from her sternum, but she didn’t protest this time, just moaning in luxurious abandon as he traced his thumb in a teasing spiral over her clit.

“Yes, _yes,”_ she breathed, as he pressed two fingers inside her. She could feel how smoothly she took them, open and soaked as she was. Lucifer angled his fingertips upwards, thrusting expertly into her wet heat at the same moment that he sealed his lips around her clit, flicking his tongue against her in an intoxicating pattern. Arching up, Chloe’s lips formed a soundless _O_ of pleasure, and her hand found the top of Lucifer’s head, gripping and pulling at his hair in a way that was probably quite painful. He gave an obscene groan of gratification and pressed into her palm, grazing his teeth over her little bundle of nerves in a devastatingly merciless move that made her eyes roll back in her head, her whole body yearning for the release that she was falling towards with the inevitability of gravitational pull.

_“Lu-ci-fer,”_ she gasped out, her breath shuddering through her chest as everything drew tight, her muscles contracting around his fingers as he thrust steadily into her heat, coaxing her to the edge. Even in the dim light, Chloe could _feel_ Lucifer’s burning gaze, his eyes saying so eloquently what his busy mouth could not. Her back arched, thighs flexing outward before clamping around him as her climax broke over her. She came with a long, growing cry of rhapsody, and if Lucifer minded the near-suffocating grip of her thighs, he made no move to complain. The thrust of his fingers dragged out her pleasure as she clenched around him, slowing precisely when she needed him to, his tongue gentling in intensity as she came down again, shuddering under his touch.

Pushing away the sheet, Chloe panted in the cool air, one hand holding onto Lucifer’s shoulder with a shaky grip. The sheet still covering her from the waist down shifted as he rose up from between her legs, his head emerging with a smug grin.

“Good?”

“Uh-huh,” Chloe replied, too mindless from pleasure to tease his ego. She tugged him up towards her, and he went eagerly, covering her body with his as though he knew exactly what she needed. Maybe it was simply the same thing he wanted - to be close, to be loved. His hips pressed into hers as their lips met, and she ground against the hard length of him, wet and needing. He moaned into her mouth, thrusting forwards eagerly, and Chloe wriggled a hand between them to wrap around his shaft, pumping him up and down in a slow, tantalising rhythm until he growled in her ear and knocked her hand away.

“I hate to be the one to tell you, but you’re a minx and a tease,” he told her sternly, then scuppered all her hopes of a witty retort as he hooked his elbows under her knees, pulling her down the bed with effortless strength, and pushed into her in one motion.

_“Oh,”_ Chloe moaned at the sensation of being filled again, at the stretch of her muscles as she clenched tight around him.

“Chloe,” he whispered, their foreheads pressed together as he thrust his hips slowly, and she could feel his reverence just as exactly as she could feel the drag and push of his shaft inside her. She arched up to him in supplication, and he kissed her ardently, passionately. He let go of her legs and she wrapped them tight around his waist as his hand found its way to the headboard above them. The play of his muscles as he moved was hypnotic, and the tension in her lower belly coiled tighter as she watched his arm flex from shoulder to wrist in time with his thrusting hips.

Everything but Lucifer seemed faded, blurry and inconsequential in comparison to him, his dark gaze burning in its adoration as the morning sun bathed him, golden skin and messy black curls. He looked debauched, mesmerising, his lips kiss swollen, his throat covered in purple marks, and _she_ did that. She pressed her nails into his chest, little pink crescents emerging where they bit, and Lucifer moaned, unrestrained and unabashed, dropping his head into her neck as his hips faltered. His free hand took hers and guided it to his shoulders.

“Mark me, Chloe, I know you want it.”

She let out a breathy whine, muscles squeezing around his length, and Lucifer thrust hard into her. The force and strength behind it made her eyes roll back, and Chloe pressed her nails into his back, raking upwards slowly, dragging over where the scars of his severed wings used to be. Lucifer’s answering groan was nearly delirious with pleasure, and his hips jerked again, before their rhythm reasserted. She rolled her hips in time with his, pace increasing as they both climbed towards their peak, sweat glistening on their skin. She pressed her feet into the backs of his thighs, needing to surround and be surrounded, as his thrusts found exactly the right angle to make her arch and keen and crumple a fist into his sweat-soaked curls. Lucifer slipped a hand between their bodies, his thumb drawing circles on her clit as he panted, dedicating himself to her pleasure in a way that no one ever had.

Chloe could feel it building, could feel in the tension of Lucifer’s muscles that he was close behind her, and wanted him to fall with her. The coil in her lower belly snapped when his thumb pressed down in a short, sharp movement on her clit, her muscles clenched down on him, tight and squeezing as she came and came and _came._ She bit down on his neck, her wail of ecstasy muffled as she added another mark to his kiss-bruised skin. She heard him crying her name, and the world went white as he lost himself inside her, hips stuttering and release spilling warm. Still coming down from her climax, Chloe blinked hazily. The world really _had_ gone white, and her sluggish, scattered mind put together the reason slowly. There was a wall of feathers hovering over Lucifer’s shoulders that shone luminously, and she couldn’t tell if their brilliance was a result of the morning sun filtering through them, or whether they just _shone._

Lucifer’s face was still buried in her neck, breaths puffing out over the sweat-slick and sensitive skin of her throat. Mesmerized, she reached a hand up and stroked her fingers through the downy feathers at the base of his wing, then moved along the top of the joint to run a fingertip down a covert. 

Lucifer twitched, his head lifting to show a befuddled expression. “What the--?” He caught sight of his wings, curled around them on the bed as they now were, and swore.

“Bloody _hell,”_ he hissed between his teeth. “I apologise, darling.” He pulled out of her gently, and when his shoulder muscles tensed, presumably in preparation to fold them away again, and Chloe couldn’t help the protest that burst from her.

“No!”

Lucifer paused, leaning up on his elbows. “Chloe?”

“I meant - you don’t have to be sorry.” Despite the fact that she was lying underneath him, sweat-soaked and thighs spread for his hips, Chloe still found heat creeping into her cheeks. “They’re beautiful, Lucifer.” She cleared her throat. _“Really_ beautiful.”

For a moment, he blinked uncomprehendingly at her. Then a slow, sly smile spread over his features. “Oh...Detective. You should have said. Even if _I’m_ not wild about them, I’d gladly whip them out for _your_ sake.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, and shifted one massive wing to trail the tip of a long primary down her shin. 

Chloe laughed, but underneath the lecherous veneer, she understood what he was actually saying, and understood the magnitude of it. Leaning up to him, she caught his face gently in her hands and pressed a chaste, lingering kiss to his surprised mouth. Pushing a little at his shoulder prompted him to roll over onto his back, taking her with him. She kissed him again, enjoying the dopey look he got under her lips. “Thank you, Lucifer. For letting me see." She knew he understood, she wasn’t just talking about the wings.

“I love you.” It seemed to burst from him involuntarily, if his look of surprise was anything to go by. Chloe didn’t imagine he’d said it many times before in his long, long life, if he ever had, and his willingness to say it to her was intensely moving. 

She blinked away tears, knowing they’d only make him panic. “I love you, too.” Stroking a thumb over his cheekbone, she thought about the burned, mangled skin that still lived underneath, even if it was only in Lucifer’s mind, now. Impulsively, she wriggled up his body to pepper kisses over every inch of his confused face, ending her circuit at his lips, where she pecked one last kiss, then sat up. Lucifer blinked, looking up at her with a dazed, dumbfounded smile as she leaned to the side, rummaging around in the crumpled sheets for her phone. 

Once acquired, she checked the time and grimaced. “Shit. I _really_ have to go, or I’ll be late to pick up Trixie.” She rolled off Lucifer and swung her legs off the bed, gingerly testing whether they would hold her weight. Stretching up, she winced at the full-body ache, then started gathering up her various discarded clothes. “I guess I’ll meet up with you later?”

She heard Lucifer sit up and take a deep breath behind her, as though he was preparing to say something momentous. “Actually, Detective…” At the sound of her title, Chloe turned around. He was looking anywhere but her, nervousness in every line of him.

“Lucifer?”

“Is it...could I come with you?” He met her eyes, looking so vulnerable it nearly read as fear. “I know I don’t - I only - bloody hell.” He seemed to struggle for a second, frustration flitting over his features, and Chloe sat back down on the side of the bed. Lucifer took another deep breath. “I’ve missed you.”

  
For the second time in as many minutes, tears threatened to cloud Chloe’s vision. She remembered his conviction yesterday, that either he would lose her to Pierce, drifting further and further apart until what they’d had dissolved utterly, or she would run once he had told her the truth. Either way, he’d expected to say goodbye. The idea that there wouldn’t _be_ a goodbye must be a lot to process, at least for the time being. “Babe, of course you can. I’d love that.” She took his hand, squeezing firmly. “I’ve missed you too. And Trixie will be excited to see you.” The badly-hidden relief on Lucifer’s face was heartbreaking. “Come on, we have to shower. _Separately,”_ she clarified hastily, “or we’ll never get anywhere.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up (tomorrow): Cain Gets What's Coming To Him, and The End. Please do leave a comment if you enjoyed!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cain gets what's coming to him, and The End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that phones don't work the way I've depicted in this chapter. I really do, I promise. Please suspend your disbelief and pretend that they do.

Lucifer ran a hand over his face, deep in thought as Chloe drove. His body was still languid and relaxed from last night with her - and then last night again, and again, and _again_ this morning. With every heartbeat, bliss was beating through his veins, excitement thrumming through him every time Chloe so much as flicked on her turn signal, although he was still having a hard time convincing himself that this was real. _She chose me, she chose me, she chose me, she chose me,_ ran through him like water in the desert, bringing to life everything that it touched.

But even while he basked in echoes of their afterglow, he couldn’t relax completely. The simple pleasure of just enjoying her company for a while wasn’t a luxury that he could afford himself. Bloody _Cain_ , he complained bitterly to himself. Even after the best night of Lucifer’s exceptionally long life, that cockroach of a man hovered at the edges of his mind, ruining what should have been a _very_ good day. He had to be dealt with. Their uneasy alliance was at an end, and last night Cain’s actions towards Chloe had tipped the balance from ambivalence to enmity. Whatever he was planning, whatever place Chloe was supposed to take in his latest scheme, Lucifer couldn’t let it stand. He’d told Chloe as much last night as she lay cradled to his chest.

“I’m going to have to find a way to kill him.”

She had raised her head, propping her chin on his pectoral to look at him. “Is that even possible?”

“I don’t know. But I have to find a way before he becomes a threat to you - well, _more_ of a threat.”

“Do you know for a fact that he will? I’m not dismissing your concerns,” she’d insisted, “but moving against him is guaranteed to be dangerous. We shouldn’t do anything unless we _know_ it will work. And that it’s the lesser of two evils.”

Lucifer had raised his eyebrows incredulously. “I _did_ mention that he’s the Sinnerman, yes? Head of an international and - I think - centuries old criminal syndicate? As well the first murderer? I think whatever we can do to quash him will, on a worldwide scale, be the lesser evil.”

“I know,” Chloe had sighed discontentedly, which went against Lucifer’s impulses entirely. In his arms, he didn’t want the smallest iota of unhappiness to reach her, and his loathing for Cain spiked viciously. “But _killing_ him, even if he says he wants to die,” Chloe continued restlessly, “it’s too much of a risk.”

“I promise you, darling, as long as you’re not in the vicinity, I could tear him apart like wet tissue without risking so much as a bruise. He might be immortal, but I’m the Devil, and without a demon blade he could fight me about as much an ant could fight a skyscraper.”

“That may be so,” Chloe had replied, unimpressed, “but that’s not what I’m worried about. I’m sure if there was a way to make him stay dead, you _could_ do it. But I don’t know if you _should.”_

Lucifer shifted them upwards, looping his arms tighter around her waist as he’d settled his back against the headboard. “What do you mean, love?”

Slipping into his lap, Chloe had faced him with a worried frown creasing her forehead. “Well, you said that the reason you were helping Cain to end his life was because killing humans is the unbreakable taboo for angels, right? And you hoped that by breaking the one rule of your Dad’s that you’ve never broken, you’d make Him angry, and as punishment He’d take your wings and give you back your Devil face - yes?”

Lucifer nodded. “That’s it.”

“Babe,” Chloe had said patiently, “that’s the dumbest idea you've ever had.”

“What?” He’d protested indignantly. “Why?”

“Well, I can’t say I know Him, or ever want to, but I don’t think that God would punish you for breaking His one, unbreakable rule, by giving you _exactly_ the thing you want. That would just be _rewarding_ you. Wouldn’t He be more likely to take something else away from you? Or send you back to Hell? We have no idea what the consequences might be.” She’d pressed her forehead to his. “I just got you, Lucifer. Don’t risk it. Please.”

Lucifer thought of Uriel. Of what Heaven was willing to take away from him as punishment for even a minor slight, and shivered. Provoking his Father was all very well, but there were other people who could suffer for his actions. People he refused to see caught in the celestial crossfire. There was _her._ “You’re right,” he said, voice low as the nauseating horror of what he _nearly_ did washed over him like bitter saltwater. Tightening his hold on her hips, he’d pressed his face into her neck. “Chloe. You’re right. I’m sorry.” He felt her nod, and her hands came up to stroke his temples. “I’ve been so _angry_ at my Father, for so long. It was too easy to fall back into hating Him, at the cost of everything else. I’m sorry.”

“I understand,” she had said, pressing a kiss above his ear. “But you don’t need my forgiveness.”

“I _want_ it,” he had murmured into her skin. She was the only person whose forgiveness he would ever beg.

“Then you’ve got it. I forgive you.” She lifted his head from her shoulder and kissed him with an easy smile, and it was every absolution that Heaven could never give. He closed his eyes, letting the benediction of her kiss wash him clean.

She pulled away all too quickly, and he followed her dazedly. She laughed. “Lucifer. _Lucifer._ We still don’t have a plan.”

“A what?” He asked blankly, struggling to remember what they had been talking about.

“A plan _._ We know what we’re _not_ going to do - we can’t risk killing Cain, even if we could find a way to do it. But he’s hurt _so_ many people, for _so_ long. Even if we can’t bring him to justice - in the human way, I mean - I can’t let him get away with it, in good conscience. If we don’t do something, and he hurts someone else, it’ll be because we let it happen. I won’t be able to live with myself.”

“I think your justice-seeking might be one of my favourite things about you. Although the list is exceptionally long,” Lucifer said with amused admiration, then sighed, and admitted slowly, “I may...have something of a plan. It’s not a perfect solution, and my inability to keep my word and _actually_ kill him will probably annoy me forever, but there is a way I could make sure Cain wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone again. You’d be safe, and that _has_ to be my only goal, now.” He cupped her face in one hand, worry gnawing. “It’s what matters most.”

*

“Lucifer!” Three-foot-something of excited nine-year-old barreled into his legs, headbutting him soundly in the stomach. Trying not to double over, Lucifer’s hands hovered awkwardly in the air as Beatrice beamed up at him. As grudgingly fond of the detective’s offspring as he’d grown, he still didn’t really know what to do when she did this. He shot a pleading look at Chloe, who was coming around the other side of the car, but she just grinned impishly at him.

“Yes, hello, spawn,” he said, patting the top of her head gingerly. “Very nice to see you, too.”

Daniel appeared at the door. “Trixie, we talked about this. Don’t run out the house like that.”

“It’s Mommy!” The child protested. “And she brought Lucifer!” Finally releasing him from her howler-monkey like grasp, Beatrice went to hug her mother, asking “Did you and Lucifer have a sleepover?” Daniel coughed loudly from the doorstep as a shit-eating grin split Lucifer’s face.

“I...I guess we did, baby,” Chloe said, a pink flush spreading over her cheeks.

“Cool!” Chirped the spawn. “Can I come next time, too?”

“We’ll see, monkey. Have you got your backpack for school?”

Beatrice shot back into the house to fetch her things, and Daniel raised his eyebrows at the sight of the two of them, standing just a little closer than usual. “Took you long enough.”

“Believe me, I’m aware,” Lucifer agreed. “We’re doing our level best to make up for lost time, I promise.” Chloe elbowed him in the ribs, and he caught hold of her hand, lacing their fingers together. “Now, now, dear.”

“Right, well, uh, congratulations?” Dan said, scratching the back of his neck in discomfort. “But I thought you were on a date with Lieutenant Pierce last night?”

“He--” Lucifer started, but Chloe cut him off smoothly.

“I decided against it in the end.”

“Right,” Daniel said, his eyes flickering between them in confusion. Thankfully, he seemed to come to the conclusion that it wasn’t his business, and let it go. Beatrice came dashing back out, backpack in place, and the tension broke.

“Ready, monkey? I’ll see you at work, Dan.” Nodding to Daniel, Chloe hauled Lucifer back towards the car. After installing the child in the back seat, she closed the door and spoke in a low voice. “I don’t want Dan to know how badly my date with Pierce went.”

“Why?”

“Because if Pierce suddenly stops coming into work then I don’t want the last thing Dan heard about him to be in connection to me, and a date gone wrong. It might be suspicious. I don’t think he’d say anything, but I’d rather avoid the issue completely if we can.”

“Ah.” Lucifer nodded in understanding. He squeezed her hand. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know. I don’t want you in harm’s way, even if you say you won’t get hurt.”

_“Can’t_ get hurt,” he corrected her, trying to be reassuring. “Not as long as we stick to the plan.”

“Hm, listen to you, advocating ‘sticking to the plan’. This must be the Twilight Zone.”

“Chloe, it’s important,” he said seriously, although even he saw the irony at the reversal of their usual roles. “It means that you _can’t_ be there, or anywhere near. Whatever you hear, you must. _Stay. Away._ Otherwise, he won’t only be able to hurt me, he’ll be able to hurt _you.”_

“You think he would?” She asked gravely.

“I’ve seen much gentler animals than him bite when cornered,” he replied grimly.

Chloe drew in a breath that was probably supposed to be steadying, but he could hear how it shook. “Yeah. Okay.” She opened the car door, and got in. He followed, and endeavoured to follow the verbalised stream of consciousness that was Beatrice’s conversational technique.

After the spawn had been left at her day prison, that Chloe insisted was considered a place of education, they parked a mile away from the precinct, near a coffee shop that they’d frequented before. Outside the swinging doors which offered ‘Free Wifi! Free Refills!’ in white bubble letters, he turned to face her.

“Are you still sure you want to listen in? I doubt it’s going to be pretty.”

She nodded, stony faced. “Yeah. If I can’t be there, then I at least need to know what’s going on, for as long as I can.”

Lucifer reached into his jacket pocket for his phone, then tapped her number. She answered the call, and he slipped his phone, now with an open line to her, back into his pocket. “I’ll see you soon, love.” 

“You be _careful,”_ she ordered him sternly. “I don’t care how immortal you are, don’t you _dare_ get hurt.” She brushed invisible specks off his lapels, and pecked his cheek. “Give ‘em hell, honey.”

With a smile, he pressed a kiss to her forehead and turned back down into the alleyway beside the coffee shop, while Chloe went inside and sat at a table by the window, watching him anxiously as he walked away.

Once out of sight, Lucifer took flight, landing in an instant outside Pierce’s office, directly in the security camera’s blind spot. He looked around carefully before tearing it from the wall, but this early in the morning, the precinct was sparsely populated, and both his appearance and actions had gone unnoticed. Slipping his phone out of his pocket, he held it to his ear. “Still there, darling?”

_“Yep,”_ came Chloe’s terse, anxious voice. _“Kick him in the nuts for me, would you?”_

“Noted,” Lucifer suppressed a chuckle, put the phone on speaker, then muted it before sliding it back into his pocket. Straightening his lapels, he breezed into the office with a smile. “Cain! Glad I caught you. Have time for a word?”

“What do you want, Lucifer?” Cain asked flatly from his seat behind the desk.

“Well, it’s come to my attention that we need to have a little chat. About the detective.”

“What ab--?” Cain didn’t get to finish his sentence. Lucifer was across the room and hauling him up by the scruff of his neck. A beat of his wings and they were across town, in a crumbling, multi-storey parking lot. There were no working cameras throughout the complex, a fact which Lucifer had checked via multiple sources before setting this plan in motion.

Using the flight for extra momentum, he sent Cain smashing into a graffitied concrete wall upon landing. He stuck his hands in his pockets as Cain thudded to the filthy floor, hacking and coughing after the impact forced the air from his lungs. 

Clumsily, he got to his knees, then his feet. “You heard about my date, then.” He choked the words out between coughs, dry-heaving from the convulsions.

“Was there ever really a chance that I _wouldn’t_ hear?” Lucifer asked coldly.

“Oh, what, because you and Chloe are _so_ close nowadays? Because she tells you everything, and comes to you for support? Sure,” Cain was panting in great ugly gasps, but still managed a derisive smile. Lucifer fought not to react. At this uncharacteristic silence, Cain looked up from where he was bracing his hands on his knees. “Look,” he continued. “It won’t matter soon, anyway. All I need is for Chloe to fall in love with me - that’s what will get rid of my mark, I’m sure of it. Once she’s in love with me, I’ll kill myself, she’ll be sad for a bit, whatever, then you can have her back.” Why he thought continuing to talk was a good idea baffled Lucifer, but talk Cain did. “It doesn’t matter. If you think about it, I just need to - I don’t know, borrow her for a bit. Once I’m dead, you might even be in with a chance on the rebound. You should _want_ to help me.”

Hands clenched into fists inside his pockets, Lucifer nodded slowly. “So, that was your plan for her.”

Cain shrugged. Lucifer snapped. With a yell of fury, he sent Cain flying backwards again with a kick to his chest, the impact breaking right through the crumbling wall into the next lot. Lucifer stalked through the debris, wishing now more than ever that he had his Devil face. If anyone had ever deserved to be tormented with the certainty of coming pain, it was this bastard.

Cain was struggling to his feet again, and this time tried to land a punch when Lucifer got close enough. For a human, it had a surprising amount of clout behind it, but without Chloe’s presence, his fist just bounced off. Lucifer let him get in a few good wallops, and delivered in return a roundhouse kick to his balls as he’d promised Chloe, mainly for the pleasure of watching Cain’s expression as he grasped him by the throat and lifted him from the floor. Feet kicking out instinctively, Cain fought to keep his airway open, striking at Lucifer’s immovable arm.

“Did you _really_ think,” Lucifer snarled, tightening his fingers around Cain’s bulging throat “that because I was willing to let her go, that I would let you _hurt_ her?”

“Why do you give a shit?” Cain gritted out. “She’s one human. You didn’t even care enough to fight for her.”

With a roar, Lucifer slammed him down, cracking Cain’s skull against the concrete. “I was going to let you be, you _idiot!_ I would have left you both alone, let you be with her for as long as you made her happy!” He leaned down to hiss in his face. “All you had to do was love her as she deserves, but you can’t change. Whoever’s name and life you wear, whatever you pretend to be, you can’t outrun the _monster_ that you truly are.”

“Neither can you,” Cain gasped out desperately with a nasty, grimacing smile, “don’t forget - you’re a monster, too. You think Chloe will want you once she knows what you are?”

Lucifer let a savage grin spread over his face. “Ah, nice try. Obviously you haven’t heard. She does know. She knows everything.” He felt a pure, ferocious delight at wiping the smug look off Cain’s face. “And she accepted me. _Me.”_ He loomed over him, close enough to see the blood vessels popping in his eyes. “Think, _Cain_ \- if she can love the Devil himself, then she probably could have loved you too, if only you’d loved _her_.”

“No,” Cain choked, his face a livid purple as his consciousness faded. “No, she c-can’t. Y-you’re - th-the Devil.”

“I am,” snarled Lucifer with feral satisfaction, “and she loves me.” With a vicious jerk, he snapped Cain’s neck with a muffled crunch. It wouldn’t keep him down for very long, but for Lucifer’s purposes, it was long enough. Unfurling his wings, he hauled up Cain’s limp corpse, and took flight.

At the edge of everything, where the borders of his Father’s reality began to bend into unreality, Lucifer opened his eyes. There was nothing, not even the dimmest starlight. He hadn’t been here since the Beginning, when his Father had ordered Light to be made and for the universe to be shaped to His will. Everything had been Light, then, and Lucifer had earned his first title, the only one he had ever wanted. But all the stars he had left here, his first, childish attempts cluttered at the furthest edge, had sputtered out long ago, in cataclysms so insignificant that no one had ever noticed.

Such indifferent desolation seemed like the best place for Cain. It was by no means a perfect solution, he could still never _really_ die - there was nothing Lucifer could do to alter that. But mortal or not, he was still human, and would only live for seconds at a time before dying, again and again in the endless vacuum. It was the closest to an afterlife that Cain would ever get, and the closest to an eternity in Hell that Lucifer could provide, without breaking the one rule that he’d never broken.

Cain’s neck was already realigning itself, and even in the absence of sound, Lucifer could see the vertebrae snapping grotesquely back into place. Ice crusted over Cain’s whole body, but for a mere moment his gaze met Lucifer’s, chest working to suck in air that wasn’t there, and would never be there. The light faded from his eyes again as the next of Cain’s infinite deaths took him, and Lucifer left him to hang, suspended in nothing. Without another glance, he took flight and went home.

He landed in the alleyway behind the coffee shop, which was, happily, still deserted. He brushed frost from the arms of his jacket, shaking out his lapels, and took in a deep, grateful breath of air. Being in the vacuum of space wasn’t _damaging_ to him, of course, but it was unpleasant when regulated breathing had been a habit for so long.

He had already started walking towards the coffee shop entrance when he found Chloe running towards him, looking pale and relieved. She didn’t slow down as she approached, just launched herself straight into his arms, and he caught her, ducking down to press his face into her hair. He wanted to cling to her. Nothing had been so very empty, now that he knew what _everything_ felt like. But she drew away, patting her hands over his torso and arms anxiously.

“You okay? I heard you fighting, but the phone cut out, and I couldn’t reach you. It sounded like he was punching you.”

“Yes, I’m fine. Maybe it got broken in the skirmish, hold on a mo.” said Lucifer, picking out the smashed and ice-damaged pieces of phone from his inner pocket. “Ah. Yes. I don’t think either Cain or interstellar travel agreed with it.”

At the mention of the word ‘interstellar’, Chloe lost what little colour she had. “It’s really done, then?”

Lucifer nodded hesitantly, wondering whether this would be the moment that she’d snap, come to her senses and understand just how _inhuman_ he was. But as always, she managed to surprise him. 

Jaw squared, she nodded back. “Good. Thank you, Lucifer.” She embraced him again, standing on her toes to kiss his cheek. “Come on. As much as I hate to say it, we have to go establish our alibis - just in case.”

At the counter of the coffee shop, Lucifer gave their order with more than his usual quota of charm, looking the barista directly in the eye and making damn sure the poor stammering lad would remember him. Chloe had chosen a table in the window, in full view of security cameras both inside the coffee shop and across the street. She took his hand as soon as he’d put down their coffees, lacing her fingers tightly with his, then looked curiously at the paper bag he put in front of her.

“What’s this?”

“Pain au chocolat. It was my fault you didn’t have time to eat breakfast this morning, so I thought I’d make it up to you.”

“Thanks. What about you? You didn’t eat, either.”

He grinned. “Oh, I ate.” His smile grew at her groan of exasperation. “Be fair now, you walked right into that one.”

“Maybe so, but you’re still _awful.”_ How was it that even the way she rolled her eyes was a turn-on? His responses were practically Pavlovian at this juncture.

They ate the pastry bite and bite about, at Chloe’s insistence that giving head did _not_ count as a meal, and kept their conversation light until Lucifer couldn’t put off asking anymore.

“How much did you hear?”

Chloe looked down, running the edge of her nail around the rim of her cup. “Most of it, I think. It was only a few minutes from the line cutting out to when you reappeared. I heard what he was planning for me - making me fall in love with him, then killing himself. That was…” She trailed off, expression turning bitter. “It wasn’t...fun to hear. I trusted him for months. I thought we were friends, I even thought for a while that I wanted to be more.”

Lucifer squeezed the hand in his. “If it’s any comfort, I don’t think it was personal. If he ever had the capacity to truly care about another person, he lost it a long, long time ago.”

Chloe shook her head in frustration, still not looking at him. “I’m just _angry_ \- with him, but with myself too. I feel like I should have _seen_ something, I should have known somehow that he wasn’t what he said he was. God,” she gave a short, harsh laugh. “I’m supposed to have instincts that I can trust. But I worked for months with the world’s first murderer, and didn’t suspect a thing. It would be nice if I could pretend that I had suspicions and just ignored them or something, but...nothing. I must have been easy to fool.”

“You have _impeccable_ instincts, Detective,” he told her earnestly, hating Cain all the more for making her doubt herself. “You could never have seen this coming. I should have tried to warn you.”

“I wouldn’t have listened,” Chloe said unhappily, “you know I wouldn’t have. You’ve been telling me who you really are from day one, and I didn’t take you seriously - and I know you a whole lot better than I ever knew Pierce. Cain. I don’t even know what to call him.”

“You’re a woman of logic and evidence. I would have been surprised if you _did_ believe me, without irrefutable proof.”

“I still should have--”

“Chloe,” he said firmly, “there’s no point to this. I’m fairly sure that if Doctor Linda were here, she’d say there’s no point in berating ourselves for things we can’t change.”

“I know,” she replied, still sounding frustrated. “But I’m not good at letting things go.”

They sat in silence for a few moments. He flipped over her hand and started drawing idle lines on her palm, writing out an approximation of her name in Early Cyrillic again and again until Chloe had thought through whatever it was that she was brooding over.

“What’s it like? Out there?”

“Space?” Lucifer shrugged. “It’s empty. There’s not really another way to describe it. Just empty and vast. Not very exciting, really, since I finished making the stars.”

“You made - of course you did,” Chloe sighed resignedly, much to Lucifer’s amusement. “It sounds horrible out there. Terrifying.” Her fingers tightened anxiously.

He shrugged “Maybe for you, but there’s no inherent terror in it for me. I don’t need to breathe, atmospheres are optional, and having wings means I don’t have to worry about getting stranded. The worst thing about it for me is the lack of entertainment.” He hesitated, wondering how much he should tell her. “You don’t have to worry about him suffering overmuch - if that’s your concern, I mean. And not that he wouldn’t deserve it. But it’s a kinder fate than an eternity in Hell, which is where I would have made damn sure he ended up, if it was left to me.”

Chloe nodded pensively. “Thank you for telling me.” Letting out a breath, she leaned back. “So you made the stars, huh?”

A little relieved, Lucifer smiled. “I did. Although I made the first one just so I would have something to throw at Amenadiel when he was being sanctimonious.”

He was happy to distract her, and answered whatever she wanted to ask for the next hour, until with a sigh, she looked at her watch. Lucifer followed her gaze. “Do you think we’ve put in enough of an appearance?”

“Yeah, I think so. It’s easily enough for a rock solid alibi, given that no one in their right mind could suspect us of being involved in Pierce's disappearance while there are witnesses and security footage of us sitting in a coffee shop a mile away, at the same time he went missing. Not that anyone has a _reason_ to suspect us,” she pointed out. “I’d be amazed if they even looked our way. And that’s _if_ there’s even an investigation. Without evidence, the department might just think he skipped town.”

“Well, if the LAPD want to look into Marcus Pierce’s affairs, there are some very incriminating leads I could point them towards. Anonymously, of course. Aside from that, do you think we might hope that it’s over?”

“I don’t know. I hope so, but for us, when is it ever that simple?” She started to get up from their table.

Lucifer snorted as he did likewise, taking her jacket and holding it out for her to put on. “Even if I don’t get indicted for jettisoning an immortal murderer into space then I’m sure trouble will come and find us anyway. Would you like to place bets on what’s going to come and screw with us next?”

“I don’t know, are you keeping anything else in Hell that might break out and go on a rampage? Hellhounds or something?”

“For your information,” he replied loftily, “my hounds are impeccably behaved. And who says it’ll be something from my side of the fence? Maybe it’ll be _your_ mother who snaps and starts killing people next time.”

“You joke, but that might actually happen if she finds out from someone else that we’re together now.”

“Penelope would _never,”_ Lucifer said indignantly, holding open the glass door as Chloe passed, but unable to stop a wide, idiotic smile from spreading over his face. He held out his hand, and she took it.

*

To Lucifer’s satisfaction, it didn’t take more than a few weeks for Pierce to make it onto the FBI’s Most Wanted list. After the alarm was raised and his home and office searched, it wasn’t long before the missing lieutenant’s shadier connections came to light. Pierce had clearly gotten lazy, and complacent from atop his position of power, assuming that his spotless reputation nullified any real need for concealment. Now, with his absence stretching out and no word of his return, his painstakingly constructed underground empire was crumbling into panic and in-fighting. At least, according to the eyes and ears Lucifer had placed at strategic points throughout the Sinnerman’s hierarchy. These same plants were also following his instructions in regards to helping hasten the empire’s demise. He’d wanted to take it over, originally, but Chloe had said _no,_ he categorically could _not_ have his very own syndicate. Which was a pity - it probably would have been quite fun, but he supposed it wasn’t as though he lacked fulfilment elsewhere.

“Do you know where I put my keys?” Chloe shouted from her bedroom.

“You put them in the fridge when you came back from Tribe Night, love,” Lucifer yelled back, breaking eggs into the frying pan.

“What?” She came down the stairs, leather jacket in hand and looking confused. “I did? I _can’t_ have been that drunk. I feel okay, mostly.”

“I persuaded you to drink a pint of water and plied you with aspirin before you went to sleep.”

“Thanks, babe.” She squeezed his forearm on her way past and went to the fridge, emerging again with car keys in hand. “So, what, you were just going to wait until I asked to tell me that I decided my keys were a perishable foodstuff?”

“Blame your spawn, she thought it would be funny.” Trixie giggled and Lucifer waggled his eyebrows at her, sliding eggs onto her plate.

“Right, and I’m sure you had _nothing_ to do with it,” Chloe said with a roll of her eyes as she sat down beside her daughter across the kitchen island, and dug into her breakfast.

Lucifer held the spatula up to his heart. “Detective, I’m _wounded.”_

“Uh huh. Are you coming into the precinct today?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

“Speaking of which,” she said, her mouth full of omelette, “we’re going to be late if we don’t leave soon. Monkey, you nearly ready?”

Even in the ensuing scramble to find homework and put on shoes and get out of the house, Lucifer didn’t miss Chloe holding up a compact mirror to carefully smooth on a coat of dark pink lipstick. He caught her eye, and her sly smile. In the car, she leaned towards him with artfully guileless eyes and pressed her painted lips to his cheek. “Thank you for breakfast, Lucifer.” He sent her an amused look, love crashing in his chest like an ocean.

One school run and one coffee run later, he handed Miss Lopez a steaming cup and leaned against the bench.

“Buddy, you’ve got a little --” Ella gestured to her own cheek, “lipstick on you.”

Lucifer grinned. “Good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it, lads. I hope that Cain's demise lived up to your expectations. Please do leave a comment if you enjoyed!


End file.
